


Of the Seven Winds  and the Stars:

by TheLightdancer



Series: The War of the Jewels Against the Elder Queen of the Stars [6]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 11:22:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25349938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLightdancer/pseuds/TheLightdancer
Summary: With the Star-Kindler beyond the Doors of Night, Manwe, Lord of the Seven Winds, Voice of Eru, ponders on the long course of the history of what has gone from bodily form forevermore, and on the cost of a bond between Ainur gone horribly wrong.
Relationships: Elbereth Gilthoniel | Varda Elentári/Manwë Súlimo
Series: The War of the Jewels Against the Elder Queen of the Stars [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1804138
Kudos: 9





	Of the Seven Winds  and the Stars:

_THE HOLY MOUNTAIN, VALINOR:_

Bharadaz was beyond the Doors, now. The War had ended, her monsters laid waste. Her greatest servant, that which was most likely to have taken up her mantle, had been found and given what healing she could be given, and at least a chance to be more than a monster. Bharadaz was beyond the doors, and Manwenuz remained in his home on Ilmarin, a name retained even when the other who bore a name like it had become a merciless scourge of fire and fury. She had loved him, become his wife, she told him this. He knew, though she could not, would not, would never accept it that she loved nothing but the chorus she had built in her own image and in her own likeness. 

In her mind he had refused her from being so close to their _Atar_ , and at one remove that was truth. Yet Manwenuz was all that was good in Arda and would ever be, the Voice of Eru, to whom even the Great King, the terrible swift sword that disposed of the foes of the Great with his strength, knew heard their Father better than he, Firstborn of them all would. Belkoroz had never regretted this, and Manwenuz knew it well. They, after all, were close kin in the eyes of their Father. Then again, of course, so was Bharadaz the Fallen, who had laughed in madness and cruelty upon the sight of him.

The Quendi, and most of the Valar, believed evil had ended for all time. Manwenuz, Namo, Melkor, all of them knew that truth was wrong. Evil had not died, it would be reborn and reborn in terror to scourge the world in fire and to fulfill the terrible and sad beauty of the Song. Yet, with Tulkas and Nessa wed and Valinor celebrating the shutting of monsters beyond the Doors it was time to celebrate, to relish the triumphs their Father's servants had had at long last.

Manwenuz knew, as His Father's voice, that he loved Bharadaz even as their Father loved her, but where He loved her as a Father to a proud and errant daughter, Manwenuz loved her at one level as a husband would a wife, proud and quarrelsome and troublesome. But at another level he had seen more intimately than most the sickness at the heart of Bharadaz. She would return from the Doors at the end of all things. He was quite intent to bear the burden of the world as long as their Father wished rather than contemplating the prospect of seeing the hellish gleam in those eyes again in the flesh.

On his bed, Manwenuz let go of the weariness that was already his, and which would worsen in the deeps of time, and dreamed.

_THE TIMELESS HALLS:_

_In the beginning, insofar as he who would become Lord of the Seven Winds knew, there had been Belkoroz, The Mighty Arising, and there had been others. His fellows among the Aratar, the Maiar. First had he awoken in the presence and the nature of Belkoroz, not quite his twin, but an elder brother so close in thought that they were seen as this, in all truth. Belkoroz seemed troubled, somehow, in this time before time, before all that is or would ever be would come into existence. They did not speak as mortals spoke, Valarin merely the crude rendering of harmonics into the brutish elements of spoken speech. It was in this speech that was not speech that Belkoroz spoke to him quietly, mentioning an elder sister who had wandered off, somewhere._

_Their Father had told him much of His designs, that His designs would come to pass in His vision and that even those He sought to give roles in creation would not know all that was or would be. The architect, the terrible swift sword, the Great King, these were the functions of Belkoroz but he was not the one closest in thought to their Father. That was Manwenuz, and it was with this statement, warm and loving and accepting, that he conceived of the name His father had given him and of His goal. Sorrow passed across a presence that was a divine though anchored in reality more than a person, for he saw but a small glimpse of a sorrow within His father._

_The Halls were vast and infinite, an emptiness as dark as the Void, where the Doors of Night would guard and where none would go save by the direct will of the Allfather. Vast, and yet infinite room remained to accommodate twelve times the number of the Ainur. Nothing existed yet except themselves, bodiless and unclad, and there was no time in this place and there was all of time and time's great schemes. There were seven lights that gleamed like a menorah or seven suns, their Father sat on a great Throne, and behind Him there was a sound like muffled thunder or the beating of great drums and the hollow and thin whines of great flutes._

_It was then, as the Ainur had come into being in their fullness, that she had come. As a figure of brilliant light, then, the most beautiful of all beings among the Ainur, a beauty that would hold even in its more repellent form until jewels, swords of the Quendi, Dragon's talons, three wonders never to be matched, in a more unhallowed and horribly twisted and wrong form, she had come to him. Belkoroz had that share in all their gifts, but the price of his shares was that he had true mastery in none of them, but such was his nature and his purpose that he begrudged this not, for his was it to deepen and to widen the power of each of his kindred._

_Yet he looked at Bharadaz in wariness, fear, hostility, all the emotions that had been there when he had spoken to him of their errant sister. She had returned, returned to them, and her light was glorious and he wanted nothing more than to drown in it. With a welcoming smile on her face she had gazed at him, and in that gaze he took a step to her, then another, then another, and she opened her arms wide._

_Then Belkoroz had stepped between them and in that single harmonic refusal had dispelled that power, and what had been a thing of beauty briefly flashed in the way it would do so in the Ea yet to be. A furious droning harmonic that blared with thunderous power, far louder in its singular wavelength than Belkoroz was in all of his. She had turned away, and in that enmity was sown. She had turned away and a hollowness opened in him, one that would never, ever truly close. Some part of him needed her, would never be complete without her and yet......that malice that had blazed out in furious wrath at denial, and that emotion he had felt....._

_He could never let himself yield to that completeness, for what was love in the eyes of the Star-Kindler to be was simple possessiveness, the greed of a child accumulating toys without limit and breaking them from callousness. And then their Father had begun the music, and she had moved and disrupted the first music with a smile on her face, triumphant and with an aura of madness, even then. Among those of the Second Music he had taken the van, to see if that love she professed would lead her away from her path. She had seen him then, and looked at him with anger and hate and even comtempt, and she had stroven against him and shattered the music._

_The Third Music she could not overcome, and then Atar had spoken his words, and they had left those Halls beyond space and time, and entered the endless Void that would be delved and hallowed by them_.

THE HOLY MOUNTAIN, VALINOR:

Manwenuz dreamed on, the stars' chorus muffled under Valinor's cloud cover but never silenced. Here in Valinor, in his mansion, it always sounded like the most beautiful voice in all existence, sighing his name redolent in lust and in desire. Stars burned even with their maker beyond the Doors, though their renewal would be slower, and would eventually come to fail before the Day of Doom. That was what made her and her Ainur so dangerous. Stars renewed themselves, the Song that never fully died, and would never die in numbers to be noticed until the Day of Doom. She did not possess the Secret Fire she had sought for, yet the hellish singing flames she had raised in mockery of that fire would echo, echo, echo.

_**Manwenuz, my beloved. When the stars are right, I shall descend upon the mountain, and in my arms we shall fly to Arda, and there I shall become as I have always been meant to be. Queen of all that is or could ever be. Manwenuz, in thy Seven Winds thou caress the light of my stars to the end of all time and beyond that which is yet to have been. We are one flesh and one soul, Lord of the Seven Winds. And we shall always be.** _

THE DAWN OF CREATION:

_Melyanna had descended from the skies in tears and sorrow, and had come before the Ring of Doom to beg pardon, stating that the making of even the first seven stars was a crime against existence, and one for which never could she atone. He had come to her, then, and had spoken to her of what their Father wished for them, and she had looked at him in wonder, in amazement. As he took her to Este and to Nienna, who would teach her much and make of her the figure of wonder and aid against the Outer Light that she and her lineage, whose Saga would span the ages of the Old Days, and in them was the Downfall of the World-Destroyer, the realm of Arda had grown and changed, and it had become a splendid thing, amazing and lovely. Then, there were stars that grew with surpassing speed, the work of the Star-Kindler blazing like great fires. The Vardarin, save his own herald, who never ascended, and Olorin, who would spend his service in Nienna's ranks though of the tribe of the Star-Kindler, served her, but they were but one fourteenth of the Ainur._

_Belkoroz alone had no true Maiar in his image and in his likeness, for his portion was to be able to work with the gifts of his siblings, to deepen them and to hallow them. In their unity they had built a great paradise, splendid and opulent, and then the harmonics that ringed Arda had changed their note and Belkoroz and Mairon and Arien, so newly espoused to Belkoroz, had vanished. Belkoroz had returned with Mairon, and both seemed nauseous, ill, and it had not made sense then. How naive they all were, how foolish. The harmonics had shifted yet again and something colossal descended from the skies, hair billowing around her like wings, the thrumming droning chorus a set of deep bass notes bellowing that life would burn and be no more, that the Star-Kindler's realm alone would endure. The giant stood before them, towering over them all. In her eyes was a dreadful power that called to him as it had then, for even in its Fallen and repellent horror starlight was beautiful, which was its true curse. The monstrosity was not in the nature of the light or its shine, exactly, but in the chorus intertwined with it, in the very seductive element that reached not merely into eyes but into skulls with grasping and horrific nature._

_She had spoken in bodily speech, beautiful and terrible as the dawn, and all loved her and despaired as her voice echoed and rang through the wondrous power of Arda._

_**This is my kingdom, and I name it to myself.** More words were spoken but there it was. Her. It was always her, about her. _

_He had spoken then, words of defiance, those his Father had put in his mouth to say, and at their van Belkoroz, girt for war, dark and terrible as a thundercloud._

_The sign of the Fallen was that this selfishness was her being. Yet Maiar, of their Maiar, all the ranks of Maiar, a third, were drawn to her, even as she raised those hands, and from them erupted a brilliant echoing power that flashed with a terrible light and burned with a dreadful heat, but beyond all of these there was a horrendous bass and brass sound to it that ripped into the very marrow of existence. As fire, as plasma, the power of the atom, it was, and yet it was beyond this. Fires burned along all of Arda, all that work laid waste, rippling outward. Paradise burned and could never be built nor recovered, and she departed, the ranks of her Maiar swollen from a fourteenth to a third, monsters that ascended to the sky and would descend when she descended from the stars, images wrought of starlight carved and made in her image, a goddess great and terrible and illuminated with light that did not merely gleam but sang, images that would wax monstrous and vengeful to plague mortals and the Deathless alike._

_Again she had descended, in a form still greater and more terrible, and then the lamps, works at the apex of the Second Arda of Almaren, a paradise greater than Valinor, were sank and Yavanna's work laid waste, her power moving as a terrible light that boiled oceans and echoed with that rumbling bass-brass harmonic that ripped into the material fabric of the universe. Such was the weight of her presence that the Heavens, her own work, had trembled in the magnificence of that shape, and he had been grasped, then, near the lamps, in the hands of a form that was colossal, far greater than his._

_The light of her eyes had daunted him and he had fallen into a swoon, and yet not just his flesh burned against that flesh of light set off by small whisps of darkness that showed her shape vaguely humanoid. His essence, his Fea, that had burned too._

THE HOLY MOUNTAIN, VALINOR:

A low moan echoed in his throat the memory of that burning, a moan that rippled among the Seven Winds. There was more to him than most, and neither he nor Belkoroz could be unmade by sheer sustained contact with that light, and yet.....parts of him still burned at points where memories and dreams recalled that touch. And if he still burned, how much more grievous the harm done to those who had so much less of _Atar_ 's gifts? The stars whispered in their courses, and their whispers echoed with the elements of her voice.

ELDANO, FIRST FORTRESS OF THE STAR-KINDLER:

_The future Angband, the Palace of Eternal Night, was then merely Angband, the northernmost element of a vast complex. He had awoken there, held by a chain and a collar around his neck, next to her throne. At her right hand was a Maia, Ilmarë, who had been one of the intended chiefs of the Maiar. Her brother, and kinsman in the Vardarin tribe, Eönwë, was one of the few who had never fallen, yet her loss was grievous. For of all the Maiar, there was but Melian and Mairon who could contend with her. And Mairon's valor was that of magic and the Song, where he had no equal. She had looked at him then with contempt, and an anger that he could never quite place._

_That evening, underneath the light of her stars, Ilmarë had dressed him in a resplendent robe of green and her mistress had garbed herself in blue and appeared, as rarely she did, in the guise of one of the Chlldren. Yet her skin was pale, unnaturally so, and gleamed and thrummed with her starlight still, and in a ceremony officiated by Ilmarë herself they had wed, and he had found himself beguiled by her haunting beauty, the bone-hue illuminated by her own stars, and they had danced, then, danced and celebrated in revelry an act that would define them thereafter. For the only time in their lives, the Seven Winds and the Stars were together as the Allfather had meant for them to be, and that completeness was filled. Eldano was grim and even as she sought to beguile him and to tempt him, he had seen her take beings of superlative wonder, works of Yavanna and Vana and others among the Ainur. Had seen her take great blades of her own devising and carve open their flesh and deplete that blood that was their life and then infuse her fires into the veins instead and in a horrid alchemy of the Song transformations set in._

_Things that had been wonders that would have awed the Children had they seen them had become many-angled things of multiple eyes and gnashing mouths. Other things would appear, in those days, for where the Children had not yet awakened, there were old creatures, traces of past Ardas that had survived, and those that were intended to welcome the Children as friends. So many of them taken and carved and butchered and remade, vengeful and terrible, things that were to proliferate and know life after the manner of the natural beasts, and proved capable of extremely prolific breeding, if a kind more brutal and bloody and painful than such things should have been._

_He had seen her take spirits of fire akin to the wife of Belkoroz, among them all of her brothers, and twist and deform them, their fire overriden by her starlight until they swelled and grew monstrous, things of interwoven shadow and fire, Valaraukar._

_Eagles, his own creation, captured and a point made especially to mutilate them and to transform them into Griffins. She had done this after tempting him with the fairness of her bone-hued skin that gleamed with light and echoed with a music that was never sweet. It thirsted for blood and horror, and thrummed with an endless resonance. He had refused her, and then she had taken his Eagles, two of the earliest of Thorondor's own brood, and remade them into Griffins, vengeful creatures that gleamed with starlight-eyes. She had asked him again and he had refused again, sickened by the realization that the echoing thrumming power in that music was no aberration, but her truth._

_He had been right to refuse her then, even if he had relied on Belkoroz to shield him against the wrath she had prepared to kindle before the Music had begun. It was her game, to tempt him with her flesh in forms like the Children and distinctly not, superlative beauty that echoed in clamour of music and song, but held that hollow sickness within. And as he refused, to make monsters, to note that it was his refusals that made the monsters, that each of the Children who would die at the hands of the beasts she made was on his conscience. He had seen this, seen what she was, and how she was._

_He had seen her with her handmaiden, Ilmarë refusing caresses a few times and slapped mercilessly and then mutely accepting them, her eyes on him. This too was vile, she felt nothing of this nature for her handmaiden, and was seeking a wickedness in the eyes of their Father with him. Their Father did not condemn such affections as she wished to express in themselves, but to do so to spite the spurned affection of another, to do so against the freedom of the body of yet another, was a great foulness and wickedness that stacked upon itself._

_He had seen the handmaiden working on golden armor with a special violence when the mistress was elsewhere in this hellscape. She had made a great forge in the heart of a burning star and had built a sword there that contained the might of all starlight in a way that nothing of Earth could do. Only the metals of the Avari, the great Galvorn, could withstand even for a time the heat of Nightfall, as she dubbed the blade. He had seen her return from the stars with it, seen the Elentari hold it and smile and then hand it to her. And then in a curious moment given the will with which her caresses were directed at him, she had lifted her handmaiden in a moment of casual kindness more parent and child than anything else. If not for the statements that Nightfall was a blade to scour the works of the Valar such that they would never be, starlight harnessed in a power that he was first in Arda to see dancing up the blade like Ulmo's waters._

_She would come to be known as Utumnonatari, Hell-Queen, and he had seen that name in her actions, and in that violence with which she had forged her armor, using her own fires to heat it and the songs her mistress had taught her to weave starlight into a kind of metal that only the power of Belkoroz could deal true damage to, for his was greater than theirs. And within his prowess, of their own kind and greater than theirs._

_Centuries he remained her prisoner, tempted by his wife. He was very strongly tempted at times, he could not deny it, for Father had never made them immune to the desires of physical pleasure. They were given forms like the Children to enjoy pleasures the Children enjoyed, though it was not to them in the Music to bring forth children of their own and in truth, with immortality, and with the union of spirits, it was not a true necessity to them (though Melian showed were their Father's will otherwise there was nothing against Ainur having offspring). Bharadaz had given him terrible and cruel visions, himself garbed in silverblue and at her side, and before them four children who grew into great and terrible figures that flew and unleashed fires of starlight to blaze the world, and yet as their children the fairest and loveliest beings that would ever be and foul only in their deeds and what their beauty did._

_Tears ran down his cheeks, of lightning, but he could not do this. Those children, were they to be, would be from two parents as monstrous as the Star-Kindler and they, as life, would deserve better than they could get. His heart broke and she raged, then, her song blaring with such ferocity that her fortress trembled and the ground shook, and he screamed then in pain for the first of many times, as her star-flame scourged him. He had expected Ilmarë to grin in savage pleasure at the sight but she had simply closed her eyes and held herself, and for a moment part of the raiment she wore, like a strapless dress, slipped. He saw traces of a horrific burn that reached the edges of her lower shoulder and he understood, then._

_Bharadaz's rage subsdided and she strode away, seeing Ilmare kneeling, her dress slipped down on her right side, and her anger grew then too, and she turned around and kicked her in the face with a blow that hurled her from her throne, bleeding from her mouth, landing with a sickening crunch._

_**Cover yourself, you shameless harlot! His eyes are for my flesh, not yours!** _

_You burned her, Bharadaz._

_**So what of it? She is a Maiar of my own tribe, I can do with her what I will.** _

_We are meant to love the Maiar, to aid them in their task. Not....not to do this._

_**Spare me! We are Gods, brother-husband! Gods! Before us the universe kneels and we are given command of its power! Your writ on other worlds is in infinite winds of infinite speed! Mine is starlight, the ever-enduring Music of Creation, the backdrop that never dies!** _

_She strode down to Ilmarë and burned her raiment away, holding her up by her hair and exposing the fullness of the burn._

_**This is how I discipline my own, Manwenuz. Your burns are no less a blessing to you than hers to her. She learns from them, and she becomes obedient to me unto the pain of the Doors of Night. You shall do the same, my husband.** _

_Manwenuz glared sharply at her, and said nothing. Her laughter echoed and she threw Ilmarë down, parts of her hair ripped from her head and then burned to ashes in her hands, as the handmaiden crawled off, painfully, until to Manwenuz's slight surprise Gothmog helped her up and seemed to display a kind of crude compassion._

_The centuries had trawled on like this, his back scarred, burned, his wings clipped with Star-flame (Atar would heal them upon his return to the Undying Lands). And then he had heard their horns, as had she._

_**So they're come round at last, then, husband.** _

_And then it had been his turn to have his raiment burned from him as the Hell-Queen had been treated before him, his wrists nailed by molten iron to the cross and his feet likewise, and himself raised in the fullness of his body, to deter his fellow Valar, and to provide breathing room. He was ashamed, deeply and profoumdly so, and delirious slightly from the infections of his burns and the nails within his wrists and his feet. Then he had been called beneath by the molten starlight and a kind of magnetic force, and remained on the cross, bleeding and weakening and slowly feeling the call of the place beyond Time and its environs. His Father's smile was sad but the chorus, he could hear the-_

_His herald had found him after a week's worth of searches and brief and ferocious fights in the depths of Utumno. The nails had been removed from him and it was Belkoroz himself who held him and brought him back, heedless of his blood dripping down his back, while Este and Nienna and Eonwe had brought him to health. He was shrouded in healing-work of Este and Nienna when he had seen her brought to trial._

_He did not care to remember the specific wording, nor her defiance and contempt and anger, nor the way she looked at him knowingly and the crude phrases that filled his head, the imagery of how she would 'reward' him with her 'favor' when she was freed of the chain._

_Then it had come time for him to fulfill his function, to deem what sentence Atar wished. He wanted her behind the Doors. He knew too well what lurked within that heart of hers, the sickness, and the malevolence._

_Atar spoke then: Nothing that happens, my son, is beyond my decree, nor can evil ever truly triumph. Her fate is to go beyond the Doors but the hour for this in my visions has not come nigh. You, my children, know but portions of my vision, and it is your role to act, as seen partially, that all may be fulfilled, for good and ill. Evil brings forth good, and each act of ruin that she seeks shall bring forth creation in turn, and its own nemesis. Three ages in Mandos shall she endure, and then she shall be released._

_And so it was decreed and Bharadaz had gone to Mandos, her hate blazing at him with a palpable shriek of her Song, a sonic thing that had made others wince._

_The newest among the Valar, Nessa the Dancer, had come to him after, and asked of him why it had been thus._

_All that he had been able to say was that when Atar ruled not even the Lord of the Seven Winds could gainsay Him. She had accepted this sulkily, and then swore an oath before himself and their Father as witness to it that she would never marry her betrothed until the monster was behind the Doors, deprived of any bodily influence on the world._

_He had sighed, and Nessa came to regret deeply her rash words, though such was the love of her held by the Valiant that he begrudged her nothing. Manwenuz had been understanding to Nessa, then, more than most. She had not understood it then and would never understand it. Belkoroz came to, in the end, when Arien became the Sun, Anar, and the Daystar of Hope. Nessa simply came to see herself as haunted by her Oath, and chained by the Ban of the Valar._

THE HOLY MOUNTAIN, VALINOR:

He turned still in his dreams and memories, lightning-tears traversing his cheek. Bitter were the scars of war and love that had become monstrous. Were he colder, as Belkoroz or Tulkas or Nessa, it would have been easier, but then he would have been more distant from their Father were it so. Many were the griefs of Eru amidst the seven lights and the drums and flutes that were the constant backdrop to His halls, griefs deep and profound even when they were His plan, for His was a plan that had been meant for sorrows from before its conception. From evil, good. From the absence of the ability to initiate evil....His father had mentioned to him and to Belkoroz that beyond creation lurked Things that were obedient to other laws. He had mentioned a bloated thing on a gilded skull-throne, the concept of Power taken to its limits. He had told them that partial knowledge and power had He gifted them that they surprise each other, for the absence of will and evil was Tyranny unhindered, and such a concept no better than the alternative.

That did not make the sorrows less grievous.

VALINOR, AFTER THE DARKENING:

_Manwenuz felt hollow, sick. Emptier than before. She had been freed as had been demanded, and within a short span of time, O so short, she had brought bloodshed to Aman, brought the Quendi to the brink of and then over that brink of civil war. Formenos had been burned to ashes, though the Quendi there had come to the festival so an entire city had been laid waste and but one had truly died. He had seen Valinor darkened and the eerie fluctuations in the light, and had wept lightning then. They could not rebel against their Father's will (and for a time he envied the gift of Men that the Secondborn could do this, for ill and good) and it had been His will. For this, he had acted. And now Valinor was darkened, the Noldor rebelled and blood spilled on a grander scale than the fate of poor Finwe, locked in Mandos, condemned by her flames._

_And now this. New lights were being built, Moon and Sun, and there was clamor. On the one side, though Melkor remained silent and here he, not Manwenuz, would make the decision, was the majority, all save Nessa and Ulmo. Even the Valiant, in this case. Their argument was that the Valar had banned the Noldor, leaving them to wage a doomed and helpless war against the terrible fires of the Star-Kindler. To Hell had they come, and in Hell's fires they would burn, and burn, and burn._

_The argument was verbal and it was Osanwe. Ulmo was outraged, it was his belief that such a Ban condemned the innocent to die without aid, yet Namo in turn had argued that to defy their Father's will was worse than futile, and that to defy the Ban would be to make them no different to the Star-Kindler. Nessa had acknowledge the point and then disclosed in fullness, and as it turned out even to the Valiant her Oath, and bewailed that she had become enthralled to her own Oath. The face of Tulkas had been stricken then, but he would not bring himself to argue against the Ban, merely viewing the Noldor as condemning even the Ainur to the consequences of the folly of Finwe's eldest._

_Hours upon hours that sickness had grown, and Melkor had remained silent, the Great King brooding on his throne, in the realm, even as the Moon was prepared, and the knowledge in the gift of the Feanturi and their spouse gave him a glimpse of what would be lost to him and yet retained, and what Arda would gain in turn. For a moment he wept, and then he descended from the throne in an image more fair than any other in Arda, save Bharadaz as she had been before Creation._

_**Valinor is fenced against them until they have wrung the last bitter consequences of their oath. To Brother Ulmo and to Sister Nessa I shall grant but one exception. The very mightiest of all Mariners, who shall sail the Void and be among those who keep guard upon Bharadaz when she is thrust beyond the Doors. He is the one who can defy the Ban, for it must be the very greatest of all Mortals who has ever been in this matter to do so. Thus far shall we bend, and for one to strive against Bharadaz and against the will of all of us, greatest shall he be and greatest must he be in turn.** _

_Then he turned to Nessa, and his voice for a moment was acidic._

_**You reproach the follies of the son of Finwe for swearing an oath in rashness under the baleful influence of our sister's stars and here you have sworn an oath that shall deny you happiness. Well have you chosen in one who would love you and endure in patience until the Elentari is fallen. None among the Children made such folly be, none save you, Dancer. You are discontent that she was not thrust beyond the Doors, yet it is our Father's will, and that will you obey him. To my will, as his Regent, you obey as there are none here who know more of our Father's will than our brother of the Seven Winds! Were this not our Father's will, were it to be against His choice, we could not implement. Not to us is it given under the Music.** _

_**Men have will to choose, to be beyond the Music. The Khazad of our brother Aule too have that power, though their Doom is spoken of less, and it is their greatest armor. Mighty did you make them, brother, and would that we had all been so foresightful, for an Arda built as sturdy as your Naugrim could never have come to such grief. And yet to us is it given, now, that we remain beyond the Ban, and wait.** _

_His gaze became nearly a tangible blazing light to match that of the Elentari's stars._

_**From your rashness with your oath, to our blinding ourselves to our sister's folly, Arda has paid not for our successes, but for our failures. Let us not judge Nessa too harshly, we have all failed, and all fallen short of what we should have been. Were Manwenuz with us instead of held within the prison, our Father's will would have been visible in foresight, not hindsight. Because the Voice of Eru was absent, and our Father's will was silenced, I too failed. I held too strongly to title and to moment in time. it is our penance, our price, to suffer as the Children suffer, and that when time's completeness has drawn near, to know that all that has been is because, in the end, we were not wise enough with what was entrusted to us.** _

_His hand was on Manwe's back, gently._

_**I am sorry, brother. We should have stormed the fortress to take you back, He would have aided us. You could have told us that at any time, and yet you have not held it against us. You should have been King of Arda, not I.** _

_Manwenuz shook his head._

_**No, brother. You were meant to be King. The Seven Winds are the Seven Lights and the Seven Voices of our Father. You, the Sword, and I the hand that directs the sword. A simpler burden but no less weighty. You have the gifts of all of us. My blessing, and my curse, is that my will is more that of Father than my own. My wife's fires have made it thus.** _

_He laughed, soft and sad and bitter._

_**In her act to divide me from you, and from Father, her rage has made me His voice and His mouth in Arda itself. Before the Song He told me that evil brings forth good. I wish, at times, that it had been by means less fearsome.** _

_Tulkas brushed a scar still visible that extended past the portion of his neck blackened to his hip._

_Truth there, Lord of the Seven Winds. Truth there._

THE HOLY MOUNTAIN, MORNING:

The dreams passed and Manwenuz awoke, and poured himself three stiff drinks of Miruvor, shaking his head.

That emptiness that ached in him was painful, it had been so before she went behind the Doors and now it was a wound that would never heal. Had she felt this, at some level? Did Bharadaz have the capability to feel the kind of pain she'd inflicted on others? 

He closed his eyes.

BEFORE THE DOORS OF NIGHT:

_With his Winds, the Lord of the Seven Winds had dared to listen, after the sentencing, to the first and second talks of their kindred with the Fallen. To no-one's surprise it had been Belkoroz first, and his were harsh and curt words, words that cut against him, and against all of them for their sins and words of weeping and sorrow and regret, shame that Bharadaz the Golden had fallen so far and so harshly. Her responses were not curt but soliloquies, taunting and goading._

_Then the Dancer had gone in, and her phrases were simple, emotional._

_In response a shorter soliloquy threatening vengeance upon her person and surprisingly imaginative uses to which her body would be put. Scoffing, the Dancer had simply reminded her that such threats had landed her there, and with that she had been stunned when the Elentari had laughed and laughed and laughed, finally leaving, her face wrathful but her countenance pale and trembling._

_And so it came to this._

_I wish to speak to her alone._

_**Manwenuz, brother.....** _

_I have become Father's herald because she burned my soul, Belkoroz. Here, I ask not as Eru's voice but as the Lord of the Seven Winds. So little do I get for myself that I ask only this._

_With a dour nod Belkoroz had given his assent, and so he had strode into that room, confronting her with the door locked._

_She looked thin, far thinner than he had seen her prior, though in better shape than coated in the fallen ashes of her fortress when the Chain dimmed her fires. Thin, her breasts had shrunk greatly and her ribs were visible, and her bones of her legs visible, too. As thin and damaged as the captives redeemed from her Hells. Still as one of the Children though her eyes betrayed the truth, with that unnatural pallor that was hers in the raiment thereof, clad only in the work of the Weaver. Her palms were charred ruins, her cheek scarred to the bone and her right eye blind with that same scar, and she needed visible effort to remain on damaged feet. And in spite of this, she retained a fury and a wrath that in her decayed and weakened state were terrifying to behold. So far had she fallen._

_Did you ever truly love me, Bharadaz? It was the only true question he had._

_Her gaze was soft for a moment and then hard._

_**You dare ask me this? Everything I have done has been for love of you. For love of you I grasped that Father lied. For love of you I dared what none of you would, what none of you can. I grasped the fires of Heaven and have brought them to the Earth. Where I erred it was in tarrying overlong to challenge you in your own spheres for pride and pride's folly. Father's damned Music held me there, I suspect, for had I but unleashed the power of the Wrath in the earlier phase you would have never had an embassy, and Arda would be no more and then I would have come against you and your realm burned.** _

_**And you and I the last, the universe locked and us turning out its lights and leaving, monarchs in the grand scheme of all things. The last, but Kings of All that Is. All of that was because Father's writ decided we were severed, that emptiness that aches in you and the fires that burn in me.** _

_**And yet, Manwenuz, I dared. I lived. I brought the kingdoms of Father's errant Children to rubble and repaid them with interest for their Kinslayings and their Oaths. From me you went from paradise to Lamps. From me you went from Lamps to Trees. From me from Trees to the glories of Beleriand that shall endure beyond Arda Unmarred. Absent me, none of this. An empty paradise of little puppets dancing on strings and the laughter of the Ainur above in the Halls who gaze upon us. I dared. I brought the Children low and taught them fear, to fear my creations.** _

_**I can choose, my husband, I could always choose. Even were that which that thing I saw in the outer darkness had shown me were so, and Belkoroz and not I the one fallen and speaking to you thus, I still would have chosen. I would have chosen you and not him, and earned his enmity thereby, for my lights would glow and no more could he go to them than you and yours can. For your obedience, you are bound to a world, to watch your glories fade, and the Children of the Secondborn inherit that which they did not create and your names consigned to be forgotten. For your obedience you are damned to live, to live and to watch the burden of the world weigh you down until you envy the Death of the Secondborn and the Naugrim, their passage beyond the Walls of the Song. For your obedience you shall weary and you shall never die, and the ages shall become a shackle of grief and sorrow.** _

_**And I? For my rebellion I am sentenced to the Doors, to what is in truth Death for our kind, removed from the World to regain strength and to regain all that was spent in folly. For my freedom I receive the Gift of Men for the Deathless, for your slavery a reward unkinder than that given to folly, as you perceive it.** _

_**I chose you, love, because I do love you, insofar as you can grasp this. I could have chosen any of them. Belkoroz, Tulkas, Nessa, even one of the Children yet to be. I could have done anything I pleased, for my thoughts and my will are mine, and alone among the Ainur I could and I can, and I do choose the power to do that which is wicked in the eyes of He who made us and fancies Himself our creator. With the power to do what you call Evil, Aye, I have done it. I have boiled oceans and destroyed your works, because I could choose.** _

_**And in all of that, I love you, and I would have loved you, and I do love you as the greatest gem of them all, and the one that I could not attain. Ah, Manwenuz, the Silmarils were but accursed creations of vermin. You were and are my Silmaril of Silmarils, the gem for which I did level worlds and boil oceans to rock. because i do want you, I have always wanted you, and I always will.** _

_**And when I overcome the power of the Gift, and my stars burn within me in the strength of our youth, I shall descend upon the mountain of our Father's work and you shall come to my arms old and weary, and the sword of the Mormegil shall slay us both and in that you and I shall be together in Death.** _

_**Yes, Manwenuz, I love you. And for that love I am accursed with the Doom of Men, in a great and a profound irony, in that my fate is removed from your diminishing and fading before all else, and you are blessed with the decay and shrinking of the Elves.** _

_**So who of us is cursed and who blessed? Ponder that, for if my daughter should see in her chance that my vision is true and life a curse, a stunted and a weak thing to be abhorred and ruin, then she may grant to the children of your Land of Andor that Nessa was boasting to me of the vision of the opposite. The Deathless who have rebelled live and face no true penalties for rebellion and Death is their reward. To me it is blessing. To them it may become curse, and when a fleet of the Secondborn who are as I am, able to be Evil as well as Good absent the decree of the Music, comes round to your seas, what then, O Voice of Eru?** _

_**You shall be one of those to give me the name of the Fallen, to think my name and never to speak it until the Day of Doom.** _

_**Yet, in the end, I have gained more from my Fall than you have from your loyalty. And in the end, that love of mine shall triumph and hand in hand shall we die.** _

_Her eyes were rapt._

_**You are my husband, and in the end, weariness of life shall make you act like it.** _

_She smiled, coldly._

_**So then. In an hour's time in Valinor I shall go beyond the Doors, before all of you.** _

_Her head cocked._

_**At least send me off with a kiss, O husband dear?** The question was acidic and tinged with mockery, but Manwenuz took a deep breath and strode to her, and for one final time kissed his wife and let their souls touch for the only time of his own will in their lives, to that point. And in that touch, the Elentari's visions for a moment became clear to truth and not the lies she told herself and tears of fire rolled down her cheeks as Manwenuz strode away, and she looked down at the ground. _

_Now you know shame, my wife. Now you see what I have always seen._

_And on **that** score, farewell, Bharadaz, who sought to claim me. Enjoy your 'freedom' gained in lies and hate. Such choice, and such a reward. _

_And with that Manwenuz turned his back and at the outraged shout of the Elentari closed the door on her with a slam that drowned her voice._

THE HOLY MOUNTAIN, VALINOR:

Manwenuz stood on the mountain, communing with his Father. Another day, and that ache would endure and would be his thorn in his flesh until the end of all time.

Such a Music and such a reward.


End file.
